Hell Hath No Fury
by procrastin8or951
Summary: Written for the prompt at hoodie-time: Dean is grabbed by one of the cults who got orders from Zachariah back in s5. They try and make him say yes to Micheal by a combination of starvation, abuse and sleep deprivation. By the time Cas and Sam find Dean, he's almost broke, and part of him seems to think he's back in hell, still refusing to say yes to Alistair.


**Hell Hath No Fury**

**Summary: **Written for the prompt at hoodie-time: _Dean is grabbed by one of the cults who got orders from Zachariah back in s5. They try and make him say yes to Micheal by a combination of starvation, abuse and sleep deprivation. By the time Cas and Sam find Dean, he's almost broke, and part of him seems to think he's back in hell, still refusing to say yes to Alistair._

* * *

The first time the blade pierces his skin, Dean laughs. Laughs because it took them three days to work up to this, and it's nothing more than a fucking pinprick. His laugh jostles the knife in the skin above his ribs, the up-down motion sawing his skin against the serrated edge, and he laughs louder before forcing himself into silence. Because it's such a joke, when humans think they can do a demon's job.

It's different up here, he concedes. He gives them the benefit of the doubt. He remembers Alastair carving one inch cubes of flesh from his bones, cataloguing them and carefully laying them to the side. The way Alastair slid his blade into each joint, jimmying it back and forth like Dean was a lock to pick, until one bone came loose from the other. He carved his name into each one, and built Dean from the bottom up, across the room. Each bone and each cube of meat exactly in the right place until Dean wasn't sure where he hurt, if it was the flesh itself or all the empty places.

In comparison, a brief pinch of a blade is not that much at all, like an itch just under his skin. If he was not blindfolded and tied, standing, arms and legs splayed, he would probably try to scratch. But they're trying, and he guesses he has to give them points for the effort.

He remembers telling Sam once, God save us from half the people who think they are doing God's work, faintly, an echo of a time when he knew nothing of angels or demons or God's will. Before he knew that God's will is the push-pull of a legion of dicks with wings all throwing Daddy's name around while they did whatever the fuck they wanted.

He hasn't eaten in three days, and that is something new. He doesn't remember ever being hungry in Hell. They didn't do physical hunger there, because they weren't physical beings. He remembers hungering for blood, for burning flesh and the feel of a knife in his hands. But he doesn't remember a feeling of emptiness in his stomach, except on the days Alastair cut it out. It's making him weak now, more than he wants to admit, but the trembling that forces the knife deeper into his side isn't from laughter anymore.

"Just say yes," he hears one of them say bitterly, like Dean's hurting this guy somehow, by standing here while someone draws lazy patterns across his stomach with the tip of a knife. Dean thinks they probably blindfolded him not to enhance his other senses, as they should have, but because they can't stand to look him in the eyes.

"I said no every day for thirty years." He grunts as the knife-wielder gets a little more daring, the blade slicing into the muscle of his abs. "Let's just see which of us lasts longer."

He hears them leave not long after. He feels the blood beading along each slice on his torso, the trail each leaves as it slips slowly toward the floor. Dean counts the ticks of the clock, how many times he can say no in every minute, as though if he says it enough they'll believe that's the final answer.

They come back daily for the next two weeks. They let him sleep only enough to be aware of what's happening to him, keep him just on the edge of hallucination. Every few days, he gets just enough food to survive, but every day he gets the pain. Sometimes they use the knife, but they are always so hesitant. They don't seem to realize that if Zachariah gave them the go ahead to torture him, Zachariah isn't going to let him die. They could make it almost as bad as Hell, he thinks, if they realized that Dean had more lives than Super Mario. Most of the time, a guy hits him, instead. The skin over his cheekbone splits on a wedding ring. Dean thinks he's probably somebody's anger management project, and hopes, abstractly, that maybe this guy has gotten it out of his system enough to play catch with his kids and cook dinner with his wife rather than whatever he used to do.

"Just say yes, man," the guy grunts, between blows. Says it like trash talk, like he needs a breather before he continues, not like the words mean anything, because after all this time, they really don't. Dean kind of wants to laugh again, but there's blood in his throat and the hiccupping gargle he makes instead makes his empty stomach turn.

"Just think," he remembers Alastair hiss into his ear, the sizzling heat of burning sulfur pressed to his back, melting the skin off in time with the knife stripping it away from his abs as Alastair curled around him. "Just think how nice it would be if you just said yes. Your very own rack and your very own knife. Your very own souls to punish. Don't lie to me, Dean. Everyone down here knows the way you love to kill…what's that you call them?" It was a practiced pause. "'Evil sons of bitches?' We've got all kinds of those down here, Dean. You could carve them up to your little black heart's content."

"Heart's…not…black," Dean panted out, foolishly, choking on the demon smoke trailing lazily into his mouth when he opened it.

"Is it not?" Alastair asked, amused. "Let's look and see, shall we?"

Alastair never was one for using his fists, but he sometimes brings in specialists.

There isn't as much padding over his ribs anymore, the muscle worn away in his body's strange and desperate desire to stay alive. He wants to tell it to give it a rest, because he'll come back, if he dies. He always comes back, and there's always that half-second of no pain that feels for all the world like pleasure. He can't remember anymore how long he's been here, but he's started to believe that no one is coming. Dean needed to be realistic. Hunters don't live very long. Is Sammy still out there looking? Dean tries to remember how many times he's said no, count up the years, remember how old Sam must be by now, and do hunters even live that long?

It's been dark so long Dean can't remember what it felt like to see. Can't remember if someone covered his eyes or if he no longer has them. Empty spaces hurt just the way flesh does, and he can't tell anymore. Hell was never cold, but sometimes Dean shivered anyway, the trembling dripping sweat into the space where his eyes used to be, or actually into his eyes. It stings, but he doesn't know if it's the sting of salt in his eyes or the burn of salt in a wound.

It is hot, though, and sweat pours off him no matter how often he tells his body that things don't work that way here. It sweats and trembles and once or twice it even vomited, just did it like any of that did much of anything. His body is embarrassing him and he keeps telling it to quit its whining, but it continues on, weeping in sweat and blood and sometimes he thinks there might be tears but it also might be sweat rolling through the empty spaces.

He can say no 345,600 times on a good day, if he keeps up the pace and mumbles through it as quickly as he can. Sometimes he makes it a song, replacing the words to Metallica with "no." Some days Alastair told him its opposite day but he won't be fooled with that, because demons lie, so if no isn't no and yes is still yes, he doesn't say anything at all. He's gone days of utter silence, not even a grunt when the ring cuts his face or the knuckles break a rib or the knife burns hot against his quivering muscles. Because he's not going to say yes.

"Dean." Not a word not a word because it's all just a lie.

"Dean, please." Something moves against his eyelids, but he keeps them closed in case there are empty spaces to hide.

"Come on, Dean, please, open your eyes." Something actually tugs one of his eyelids open and he guesses the empty space isn't so empty because Sam is staring into him. He opens his eyes but clenches his teeth. He hates when they look like Sam, because they never get Sam quite right. He's always just a little too tall and a little too strong, eyes just a shade too dark, and they miss his smile completely.

"Dean, say something. Dean. Dean, please," not-Sam begs him and he shakes his head. This not-Sam is a pretty impressive forgery, though, he has to admit. They finally got the eyes and the height and the shoulders are just the right width. Not-Sam's hands on Dean's face, brushing through his hair aren't too strong at all. "Cas, do something."

And that has Dean's attention, because no one has ever been Cas before. And it doesn't make sense, because he didn't know Cas. Cas was the one who…Cas took him out of here. But Cas is here with him.

The shackles are removed and he sags into not-Sam's arms. He's filthy and shaking and so weak and he feels not-Sam's arms wrap around him gently and the pressure of it bruises his ribs anyway. His face is pressed uncomfortably into not-Sam, so not-Sam's collarbone is pressing on the cut on his cheekbone, but he can't even push himself away, finds his arms wrapping loosely around this body that isn't his brother instead.

"Cas!" He feels not-Sam's voice rumbling in his chest and finally manages to turn his head, just long enough to see Cas reach out to touch both of their foreheads, a group of very human-looking entities moving in behind him. And then Dean is still in not-Sam's arms, but they're in a motel room, on their knees on the floor, clinging to each other and he starts to think that maybe he missed a step.

"Where?" he croaks, as not-Sam grabs his shoulders and leans him back, trying to look Dean in the eye.

"I don't know," not-Sam admits. "I think Cas stayed behind to take care of…all of that."

Dean nods even though Hell wasn't something one angel could just take care of on his own. He doesn't understand what this is. He's been in Hell a long time, but this is new to him.

"We've got to get you cleaned up," not-Sam says, and somehow maneuvers Dean up and into the bathroom, depositing him in the bathtub, where Dean sprawls boneless, watching as not-Sam collects towels and bowls of warm water from the sink and a first aid kit, of all things.

"No point," he rasps and not-Sam slips an arm behind his back and holds him up enough that he can drink some water, but takes it away after just a couple of gulps.

"We don't know when Cas is going to get here," not-Sam says, beginning to cut away Dean's shirt. "You're bleeding and shaking and you've got a fever."

"Things don't get infected here," Dean said, tired of playing this game with not-Sam. He didn't understand the rules because Cas had pulled him out of the Pit after he said yes, but he doesn't remember saying yes, and he knows he didn't say yes because he was still on the fucking rack. He doesn't understand how Cas was here.

"Dean."

Dean scowls up at not-Sam, who has succeeded in getting him naked and he'd be irritated if he thought this was remotely real.

"Dean, where do you think we are?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "Like you don't know."

"Dean…" not-Sam's voice trails off and his eyes grow wide and sad and Dean somehow, stupidly, knows that this isn't not-Sam at all. "Dean, you were taken by some humans. Almost two months ago. Zachariah told them to torture you, starve you, deprive you of sleep, whatever they had to do to get you to say yes. To Michael. You weren't…this isn't…" Sam takes a deep breath. "This wasn't demon stuff. This was regular old people suck stuff."

Dean doesn't say anything for a long time. He lets Sam clean him up, lets his brother almost lift him out of the bathtub, guide him into sweatpants and help him lay carefully on one of the beds. He watches Sam carefully clean his wounds, bandage them. Sam keeps up an endless litany, explaining to Dean how they found him, what really happened, apologizing for it taking so long. He traces gentle fingers over Dean's prominent ribs, curses Zachariah and his weird cult followers and angels and demons and God, where ever the hell he is. Dean mumbles agreeably with him. He hasn't slept a full night in what Sam said was almost two months, and it's wearing on him, his body trembling with exhaustion and he can't keep his eyes open but he has to know, so he forces his eyes open and finally asks.

"This is really real?"

"Yeah, Dean," Sam says, pulling a blanket over Dean and tucking him in carefully. "You're going to be okay now."

And when he feels Sam slip into the bed next to him, wrap an arm around him and pull him close, feels the heat of his brother's skin at his back, he thinks that even if this isn't real, it's the best day he's ever had in Hell.

**End**


End file.
